☕️ Digital video ad spend surges on AI targeting

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In today's MarketingShot:

📊 Google Ads launches new tools for mapping incrementality

📹 Digital video ad spend surges on AI targeting

⚖️ FTC bars Kochava from selling sensitive data

🎯 The intent data playbook is breaking down

💡 + 7 strategies & tactics

🎁 + 8 other news & articles you might like

🧰 + 2 trending marketing tools

📊 Google Ads launches new tools for mapping incrementality LINK

Google Ads has rolled out new tools for mapping incrementality, including a Map View inside Data Manager, an enterprise version of Meridian called Meridian Studio, and an open-source GeoX tool for measuring performance across geographic regions.
The updated Data Manager removes the need for coding in its tagging tools, and Google says advertisers adopting the new tagging approach are seeing an average 14% conversion lift without relying on engineering support.
GeoX, tested in select markets since 2022, compares performance across regions to measure incremental growth, and Google is pitching it alongside attribution models so teams can calibrate faster-moving day-to-day optimization decisions.

📹 Digital video ad spend surges on AI targeting LINK

Digital video ad spending is climbing sharply as AI and targeting reshape buyer strategy, according to the 2026 IAB Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report, which tracks a market moving toward automation and precision.
U.S. digital video ad spend will grow 11% year over year, running nearly 20% faster than the total ad market, and will pass 60% of combined TV and video spend for the first time.
Streaming adoption among small and mid-sized advertisers jumped from 60% in 2024 to 85% in 2026, while two-thirds of digital video buyers are live, testing, or planning agentic AI use next year.

⚖️ FTC bars Kochava from selling sensitive data LINK

The Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement blocking Kochava and its data-broker subsidiary Collective Data Solutions from selling, licensing or sharing sensitive location data without first getting a consumer's affirmative express consent tied to a requested service.
The 2022 FTC lawsuit alleged Kochava sold precise location data linked to hundreds of millions of mobile devices, letting buyers trace visits to health facilities, places of worship, addiction recovery centers and shelters without users knowing.
Beyond the consent rule, Kochava must build a program to flag sensitive locations, vet suppliers for proper consent, report violations, let people request who received their data and delete records on a fixed schedule.

🎯 The intent data playbook is breaking down LINK

The traditional approach to intent data is falling apart as B2B marketers buy from the same handful of sources, pushing up CPLs while conversion rates stay flat and competitors chase identical in-market accounts.
DemandScience's 2026 State of Performance Marketing Report found 87% of organizations say their marketing investments produce unreliable or inflated intent signals, and only 26% of those signals turn into qualified opportunities.
Small teams can build a custom signal layer, covering 100-300 target accounts through Clay, UserGems, website monitoring and LLM research sweeps on hiring and funding, for under $2,000 a month.

Strategies & Tactics

> Query intent vs. conversion intent: Why the difference matters: Separating what someone types (query intent) from what they actually want to accomplish (conversion intent) lets marketers align brand and performance signals across search and AI surfaces.

> Suggest practical items to reduce cart abandonment: Recommending useful, everyday items alongside fun purchases lowers the guilt shoppers feel about indulgent carts, making them less likely to abandon checkout.

> Product SEO: 8 Strategies That Drive Demand for B2B & SaaS: Optimizing feature, pricing, integration, and comparison pages — not just blog content — to rank for high-intent queries buyers use when they're closest to purchasing.

> WTF are brand health metrics?: combines traditional brand health measures like brand lift and consideration with performance metrics like ROAS, since performance spend alone now shows diminishing returns.

> All About PMax: When to Add on to Your Search Strategy: Layers Google's AI-driven Performance Max campaign on top of a working Search setup to reach buyers across all channels before they actively search.

> How to Write Content That Lands With Decision Makers: means framing each piece around a specific decision the executive must make, defend, or defer, so the content earns attention instead of summarizing what they already know.

> The 10-gate AI search pipeline: Find where your content fails: diagnoses your AI search performance across 10 sequential stages from discovery to citation, since the weakest gate caps results and fixing it first unlocks everything downstream.

Other news & articles you might like

YouTube allows creators to replace music with copyright issues with genAI songs LINK

Buy reviews searches surge 1,325% as trust worries grow LINK

Threads expands trending topic summaries to more regions LINK

Nielsen's Predictive Sales Lift promises mid-campaign answers without the wait LINK

Netflix joins the attention war with new 'Clips' feature LINK

Web Bot Auth, Google’s new experimental method to validate authentic bots LINK

Cloudinary adds AI video publishing tools to MediaFlows LINK

Ingenious McDonald's print ads are going viral (again) LINK

Trending Marketing Tools

Dina: a macOS app that combines screen recording, audio cleanup, transcript editing, AI captions, and 8K export into one unified video workflow tool. LINK

Arcana Labs: consolidates 22+ AI creative tools—image, video, upscaling, and in-painting—into one subscription, replacing 12+ separate paid services. LINK

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